DC plane crash wreckage pulled from Potomac — as eerie photo shows chopper in watery grave
Authorities began pulling the wreckage of doomed American Airlines Flt. 5342 from the Potomac River on Monday — as most of the bodies of the 67 people who died in the tragedy were recovered.
Photos show the US Army Corps of Engineers using a crane to lift one of the plane’s massive turbines from the waves and deposit it on a flatbed barge near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in DC.
The crane also hoisted the shattered pieces of the fuselage of the passenger jet, which slammed into an army Black Hawk helicopter before crashing into the Potomac around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday.
In addition, aerial photos released by the National Transportation Safety Board showed the chopper lying in its shallow, watery grave — as submerged parts of the doomed plane lay nearby.
The Army Corps said it is salvaging the jet first, a job that should take about three days.
Officials have recovered the bodies of 55 of the 67 people who died in the midair collision but say they need to raise the jet’s remains to retrieve the rest, NBC reported.
Afterward, authorities will retrieve the fallen Black Hawk. The bodies of the three soldiers in the fated chopper have already been recovered.
“All salvage operations are completed in close coordination with Unified Command to ensure the dignified recovery of missing flight passengers, personnel,” the Army Corps wrote online.
“Should any remains be located, an automatic work stoppage would begin until proper coordination with appropriate authorities.”
Washington Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said at a Sunday news conference, “We’re going to recover everyone.
“If we knew where they were, though, we would already have them out, so we have some work to do as the salvage operation goes on,” he said. “We will absolutely stay here and search until such point as we have everybody.”
The salvage operation — made more difficult by the river’s dark, opaque waters — should last until about Feb. 12, depending on the weather and tides, the outlet said.
“The level of coordination both behind the scenes and out on the Potomac is exceptional,” Baltimore District Commander Col. Francis Pera said.
On Sunday, some of the families of the victims gathered at the shoreline to watch the slow, solemn operation.
“They are a strong group of families that are focused on getting their loved ones back,” Donnelly said.
“We have not and will not lose focus of what is most important — the safety of our crews and accounting for those still missing to bring closure to their families and loved ones.”
An airplane hangar will house the wreckage, which the NTSB will continue to peruse as it investigates the cause of the crash.
The board’s investigators have said black box data showed the airliner flying at about 325 feet just before the collision — far higher than the 200-foot ceiling set by the Federal Aviation Administration for helicopters in the area, prompting a slew of questions.
“These were two experienced, qualified pilots to fly in this local area,” said Col. Mark Ott, deputy director of aviation for the Army, of the chopper’s operators.
“This is something they’ve done many times before, and they were simply out flying a training mission that’s required to re-evaluate, just like every Army pilot does on an annual basis,” he said. “You get re-evaluated, re-signed off to fly in your local area.”
The airline pilots seem to have pulled up the nose of their craft at the last second, and investigators are trying to figure out if air traffic controllers knew the helicopter’s actual altitude before the crash. Early reports on the air-control tower’s data say it showed the chopper still at 200 feet at the time of the disaster.
“From tragedy, we draw knowledge to improve the safety for us all,” NTSB member Todd Inman said. “That’s what we’re doing right now, dealing with tragedy, but we need to improve safety.”
